A Beautiful Mind (2001) - IMDb IMDb There was an error trying to load your rating for this title. Some parts of this page won't work property. Please reload or try later. X Beta I'm Watching This! Keep track of everything you watch; tell your friends. Error After John Nash , a brilliant but asocial mathematician, accepts secret work in cryptography, his life takes a turn for the nightmarish. Director: From $2.99 (SD) on Amazon Video ON DISC a list of 30 titles created 16 Apr 2012 a list of 27 titles created 24 Sep 2013 a list of 36 titles created 24 Dec 2013 a list of 22 titles created 04 Mar 2014 a list of 21 titles created 08 May 2014 Title: A Beautiful Mind (2001) 8.2/10 Want to share IMDb's rating on your own site? Use the HTML below. You must be a registered user to use the IMDb rating plugin. Won 4 Oscars. Another 33 wins & 65 nominations.

See more awards » Photos When a Roman general is betrayed and his family murdered by an emperor's corrupt son, he comes to Rome as a gladiator to seek revenge. Director: Ridley Scott Forrest Gump, while not intelligent, has accidentally been present at many historic moments, but his true love, Jenny Curran, eludes him. Director: Robert Zemeckis A determined woman works with a hardened boxing trainer to become a professional. Director: Clint Eastwood The true story of Frank Abagnale Jr. who, before his 19th birthday, successfully conned millions of dollars' worth of checks as a Pan Am pilot, doctor, and legal prosecutor. Director: Steven Spielberg A sexually frustrated suburban father has a mid-life crisis after becoming infatuated with his daughter's best friend. Director: Sam Mendes Will Hunting, a janitor at M.I.T., has a gift for mathematics, but needs help from a psychologist to find direction in his life. Director: Gus Van Sant In 1954, a U.S. marshal investigates the disappearance of a murderess who escaped from a hospital for the criminally insane.

Director: Martin Scorsese When his secret bride is executed for assaulting an English soldier who tried to rape her, William Wallace begins a revolt against King Edward I of England. Director: Mel Gibson In the antebellum United States, Solomon Northup , a free black man from upstate New York, is abducted and sold into slavery. Director: Steve McQueen A boy who communicates with spirits that don't know they're dead seeks the help of a disheartened child psychologist. Director: M. Night Shyamalan The lives of guards on Death Row are affected by one of their charges: a black man accused of child murder and rape, yet who has a mysterious gift. Director: Frank Darabont An insurance salesman/adjuster discovers his entire life is actually a television show. Director: Peter Weir Edit Storyline From the heights of notoriety to the depths of depravity, John Forbes Nash, Jr. experienced it all. A mathematical genius, he made an astonishing discovery early in his career and stood on the brink of international acclaim. But the handsome and arrogant Nash soon found himself on a painful and harrowing journey of self-discovery.

After many years of struggle, he eventually triumphed over his tragedy, and finally - late in life - received the Nobel Prize. Written by Universal Pictures and DreamWorks Pictures See All (188) » Taglines: The Only Thing Greater Than the Power of the Mind is the Courage of the Heart See more » Genres: Rated PG-13 for intense thematic material, sexual content and a scene of violence | See all certifications » Parents Guide: 4 January 2002 (USA) See more » Also Known As: Una mente brillante See more » Filming Locations: $2,501,096 (USA) (21 December 2001) Gross: Did You Know? Trivia John Nash is the co-inventor (independently from the Danish mathematician Piet Hein) of the strategy game Hex. This was caused by his frustration after he was defeated at Go, and he wanted to create a "perfect" game. The scenes where he does that were shot but then deleted from the final cut, and can be found in the DVD extras or online. See more » Goofs The light switch on the wall in the Nash house is of a modern design.

See more » Quotes [first lines] Helinger : Mathematicians won the war. Mathematicians broke the Japanese codes... and built the A-bomb. Mathematicians... like you. The stated goal of the Soviets is global Communism. In medicine or economics, in technology or space, battle lines are being drawn. To triumph, we need results. Publishable, applicable results. Now who among you will be the next Morse? The next Einstein? Who among you will be the vanguard of democracy, freedom, and discovery? Today, we bequeath America's future ... – See all my reviews I think its a good idea to know as little as possible about this movie before seeing it. Now that I've seen it, the commercials on television seem to be giving away too much. With that in mind DO NOT READ THIS IF YOU HAVEN'T SEEN IT! Its a hard movie to pinpoint. Its not like any other movie I've ever seen, in that a character exists that is not real.

John Nash's mind is the reality of the movie and its not until the movie is half over that you realize this and its jarring that you've been taken on a ride with this man's illness, and accepted it as the real world. Its also a very heartbreaking thing. From the middle point, John and you see the world differently because he starts to receive treatment. Russell Crowe does not overdo it for a minute and turns in his customary brilliant performance. Would not surprise me at all if he were to win his second Best Actor Oscar in March 2002. He really is that good. Just as good but with less screen time is the beautiful and beautifully talent Jennifer Connelly, who the world may finally get to see in a mainstream movie. Her chemistry with Crowe is vital to the movie and neither of them disappoint the audience at all in that respect. I enjoyed it immensely and felt like I had seen a movie when it was over. I was shown a person at their best and the worse and everything in between, by a masterful actor at the top of his game. I am sure Ron Howard deserves a lot of credit that he won't get, too. 182 of 227 people found this review helpful.

Was this review helpful to you? Yes Famed 'A Beautiful Mind' mathematician John Nash, wife, killed in N.J. Turnpike crash | NJ.com Famed 'A Beautiful Mind' mathematician John Nash, wife, killed in N.J. Turnpike crash MONROE -- John Forbes Nash Jr., the brilliant Princeton University mathematician whose life story was the subject of the film "A Beautiful Mind," was killed with his wife Alicia on Saturday in a crash on the New Jersey Turnpike. Nash was 86. Alicia Nash was 82. The couple lived in Princeton Junction. Police said the two were in a taxi traveling southbound in the left lane of the turnpike when the driver of the Ford Crown Victoria lost control as he tried to pass a Chrysler in the center lane, crashing into a guard rail near Interchange 8A in Monroe Township, according to State Police Sgt. Gregory Williams. The couple was ejected from the car, Williams said. "It doesn't appear that they were wearing seatbelts," he said. The second vehicle also crashed into the guard rail, Williams said. The taxi driver was extricated from the vehicle and flown to Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital in New Brunswick with non-life-threatening injuries.

He was identified as Tarek Girgis, 46, of Elizabeth. A passenger in the Chrysler was treated for neck pain. The crash was reported at 4:30 p.m. The couple were pronounced dead at the scene at 5:18 p.m., said authorities. A spokesman for the Middlesex County Prosecutor's office said no charges were expected to be filed in the case at this time. Nash had been in Norway on Tuesday to receive the Abel Prize for Mathematics from King Harald V for his work, along with longtime colleague Louis Nirenberg, for their work on nonlinear partial differential equations. Why John Nash was important to the world beyond mathematics Reached at his home Sunday, Nirenberg, who had known Nash since the 1950s, called him a "wonderful mathematician." After flying back with the couple back from Norway, he said they got into a taxi at the airport for the ride back home together. Nash, a West Virginia Native, shared a Nobel Prize for Economics in 1994, the year before he joined the Princeton mathematics department as a senior research mathematician.

He is known for his work in game theory and his struggle with paranoid schizophrenia, depicted in the 2001 film, "A Beautiful Mind," starring Russell Crowe. In a Tweet, Crowe today said he was stunned. "My heart goes out to John &Alicia & family," he wrote. "An amazing partnership. Beautiful minds, beautiful hearts." Stunned...my heart goes out to John & Alicia & family. An amazing partnership. Beautiful minds, beautiful hearts. -- Russell Crowe (@russellcrowe) May 24, 2015 A Beautiful Mind Nash, born in Bluefield, W.Va., grew up in West Virginia and received his bachelor's and graduate degrees from Carnegie Institute of Technology (now Carnegie Mellon University). He received his doctorate in mathematics from Princeton in 1950. Named early in his career by Fortune magazine as one of the most promising mathematicians in the world, Nash is regarded as one of the great mathematicians of the 20th century.

He set the foundations of modern game theory-- the mathematics of decision-making--while still in his 20s, and his fame grew during his time at Princeton University and at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he met Alicia Larde, a physics major. They married in 1957. They were a study in contrasts. He was lanky, lean and eccentric, and often with a sly smile. Alicia, a San Salvador native who still retained an accent, was always the family anchor. Former colleagues, friends, followers take to Twitter to remember Nash But by the end of the 1950s, the voices in his head began to overtake his thoughts on mathematical theory. In his biography, Sylvia Nasar described how Nash accused one mathematician of entering his office to steal his ideas and began to hear alien messages. She noted that when Nash was offered a prestigious chair at the University of Chicago, he declined because he was planning to become Emperor of Antarctica. Alicia had him involuntarily committed several times, including twice in New Jersey, at Trenton Psychiatric Hospital and Carrier Clinic, creating such a rift in their relationship that they divorced in 1962.

Nash, despite his illness, continued to teach and took research jobs throughout the 1960s and 1970s, returning to take up his old life with his former wife and their son. Alicia, who took a job as a computer programmer for NJ Transit, continued to support both her ex-husband and their son. Schizophrenia fades As Nash aged, however, the schizophrenia symptoms began receding in the late 1970s and the voices in his head faded. John Nash and wife fought the stigma of mental illness "I had been long enough hospitalized that I would finally renounce my delusional hypotheses and revert to thinking of myself as a human of more conventional circumstances, and return to mathematical research," Nash later wrote for the autobiography that described his recovery. Alicia remained his caretaker while he battled his mental illness. The two remarried at their home in 2001 and in later years became major advocates for mental health care in New Jersey when their son John was also diagnosed with schizophrenia. "He was a wonderful man," said state Sen. Richard Codey (D-Essex), who has been in the forefront of mental health legislation in the state.

"He helped fight for all of us. He was very candid about his illness and we're all better off for it." Neighbors said that despite his celebrity, Nash maintained a modest demeanor. "We all knew that he was this sort of famous person," said Fabian Ponce, who lives near the Nash's modest two-story Princeton Junction home. But Nash could often be seen walking, rather than driving, around their quiet neighborhood, Ponce said. And it was not uncommon to see Nash eating local restaurants with his son, he added. "That's what struck me about him," Ponce said. "Despite his eminence in his field, and the movie, he was just so down to earth." On Sunday afternoon, a handful of residents began to congregate outside the Nash home. One neighbor, Gabriel Morales, said he was traveling northbound on the New Jersey Turnpike Saturday afternoon and witnessed the aftermath of the accident. Hours later, Morales said he passed by the accident scene again as he traveled south on the turnpike from Newark International Airport. "You could see a vehicle that was similar to a taxi, but it was mangled," Morales said. In Princeton, Dan Corica, a graduate of the university, said he often saw Nash on campus.

"He was a recognizable presence on campus and we were always excited when we saw him having meals in the Frist Campus Center," Corica said. The campus was mostly empty today because of the holiday weekend, but Dano Kim, who studied mathematics at Princeton and earned a graduate degree in 2007, said he spoke with Nash from time to time. "He was very inspiring to talk with him," Kim said."He was very different from what I read in the biography because there, there was very strange stories. But when I was talking to him he was very kind and sounded like a very normal person." The last time many at Princeton saw Nash was in late March, when the university held a celebration following the announcement that he had won the Abel Prize with Nirenberg . Nash and his wife had attended the informal campus reception, where colleagues took turns lauding the mathematician. The prize--which came with an $800,000 prize that Nash would split with Nirenberg--was considered the pinnacle of his career. "The Abel Prize is top-level among mathematics prizes," Nash said in his soft voice at the event, according to an account written by the university's press office.

"There's really nothing better." Though Nash was best known for his work in game theory, the Abel Prize recognized his other groundbreaking work in geometry and partial differential equations. At the reception, Nash quietly discussed his work with fellow mathematicians and Princeton colleagues, according to those who attended. He wore a suit and an orange tie with a drawing of Princeton's Cleveland Tower, one of the university's landmarks. "Short of getting the prize myself, there is no one the prize could go to that would make me more happy," Sergiu Klainerman, a Princeton mathematics professor, said during a series of informal speeches at the reception, according to the university's account. "The prize has redressed a historical anomaly in the public," Klainerman said, referring to the popularity of Nash's game-theory work. "We mathematicians know very well that [Nash] did far deeper work much later. These are the works for which he is finally recognized today by the most prestigious mathematics prize." Princeton University President Christopher Eisgruber called Nash and his wife special members of the community. "We are stunned and saddened by news of the untimely passing of John Nash and his wife and great champion, Alicia," said Eisgruber.

"John's remarkable achievements inspired generations of mathematicians, economists and scientists who were influenced by his brilliant, groundbreaking work in game theory, and the story of his life with Alicia moved millions of readers and moviegoers who marveled at their courage in the face of daunting challenges." John Nash, 'A Beautiful Mind' inspiration, and wife die in N.J. car crash - LA Times John Nash, 'A Beautiful Mind' inspiration, and wife die in N.J. car crash John Nash Frank Jacobs III / Associated Press Nobel Prize-winning mathematician John Nash and his wife, Alicia, shown in 2002, were killed in a taxi crash on the New Jersey Turnpike on Saturday, police say. Nobel Prize-winning mathematician John Nash and his wife, Alicia, shown in 2002, were killed in a taxi crash on the New Jersey Turnpike on Saturday, police say. (Frank Jacobs III / Associated Press) Steve Chawkins Nobel Prize winner John Nash, inspiration for 'A Beautiful Mind,' and wife killed in N.J. car crash The barefoot man in mismatched plaids roamed for years through Princeton University’s math building, muttering to himself.

In empty classrooms, the “Phantom of Fine Hall,” as he was known, scribbled mysterious equations and strange revelations. He was a solitary figure, tormented by paranoia and subject to strange delusions. He once declined an appointment to the faculty at the University of Chicago, saying he was about to be named Emperor of Antarctica. But John Forbes Nash Jr. was also a genius, a Nobel Prize winner who transformed economics and was known as one of the greatest mathematicians of his time. The inspiration for Ron Howard’s 2001 Oscar-winning film “A Beautiful Mind,” he eventually recovered from his devastating illness, defying a common misconception about schizophrenia. Nash, 86, and his wife, Alicia, 82, died Saturday in a traffic accident on the New Jersey turnpike. The taxi in which they were passengers hit a guardrail near Monroe Township, a spokesman for the New Jersey State Police said. (Daniel A. Grech) While Nash was famous among mathematicians for sophisticated solutions to a variety of problems involving algebraic geometry and partial differential equations, he was more widely known for his work in economics.

His 1994 Nobel Prize in economics was for his contributions to game theory, a discipline that has become fundamental to the study of the field and a crucial aid in high-stakes contests such as arms talks, trade negotiations, and elections. It was a concept he laid out in his doctoral thesis when he was just 21. His paper was only 27 pages – and “very generously double-spaced,” his friend and Princeton colleague Harold W. Kuhn joked to a Nobel seminar in 1994. But the implications of what came to be called “the Nash equilibrium” were huge. Game theory had emerged in the 1940s as the creation of mathematician John von Neumann and economist Oskar Morgenstern. The two delved into “zero-sum” games – the kind with a winner who takes all and a loser who gets nothing. With mathematical elegance, Nash analyzed more complex rivalries and found ways to compute a sweet spot – the Nash equilibrium – where each party gets the best deal possible under the circumstances. Unions and management would apply it in complicated contract decisions; nuclear superpowers would use it in raising the specter of “mutually assured destruction” to keep a tenuous peace.

“Nash’s insight into the dynamics of human rivalry — his theory of rational conflict and cooperation — was to become one of the most influential ideas of the twentieth century,” his biographer Sylvia Nasar wrote in her 1999 book “A Beautiful Mind.” Nash transformed economics, Nasar wrote, just as “Mendel’s ideas of genetic transmission, Darwin’s model of natural selection, and Newton’s celestial mechanics reshaped biology and physics in their day.” Before writing his groundbreaking thesis, Nash had taken only one class in economics. Born June 13, 1928, in Bluefield, W. Va., Nash was the son of John Sr., an engineer, and Virginia, a former teacher. When he was in fourth grade, his parents were told their son had no ability at math. It seemed he would always get the right anwers – but approached the problems in off-the-wall ways that weren’t in the textbook. Nash entered the Carnegie Institute of Technology in Pittsburgh on a full scholarship.

In three years, he graduated with bachelor’s and master’s degrees in mathematics, as well as a one-line reference that eased his way into one of the world’s most esteemed doctorate programs for mathematicians: “This man is a genius.” At Princeton, Nash seldom attended class, annoyed other students by incessantly whistling Bach fugues, and spent hours bicycling figure-eights on the university’s quadrangle. He quickly developed a reputation for arrogance. After just a few weeks on campus, he managed to make an appointment with Princeton’s most famous professor, Albert Einstein. “It was a measure of Nash’s bravura and the power of his fantasy that he was not content merely to see Einstein but soon requested an audience with him,” Nasar wrote. In Einstein’s study, Nash related some of his ideas on gravity, friction and radiation. After an hour, Einstein told him: “You had better study some more physics, young man.” Nash’s chutzpah, while off-putting to some, did not hurt him professionally. At 22, he received his doctorate from Princeton. Meanwhile, he worked summers as a consultant at the RAND Corp. in Santa Monica, where game theory was being used to craft defense strategies.

Nash was made a full-time instructor at MIT in 1953. The following summer was to be his last at RAND when he was arrested for indecent exposure in a men’s restroom at the beach in Santa Monica. His security clearance was revoked, but no charges were filed. When Nash was 30, Fortune magazine singled out the MIT wunderkind as one of America’s most brilliant mathematicians. In 1957, he married Alicia Larde, a physics student from El Salvador, and the two had a baby boy. He also had a son from a previous relationship. But by then, some of the personality quirks that could be dismissed as prerogatives of genius had turned self-destructive. On New Year’s Eve in 1958, Nash showed up at a party wearing nothing but a diaper and a sash. Sucking from a baby bottle filled with bourbon and milk, he spent hours sitting on his wife’s lap. In a faculty lounge, he pointed to a front-page story in the New York Times and told his stunned colleagues that extraterrestrials had seeded the article with coded messages aimed at him.

At a lecture a few weeks later on his purported solution to one of mathematics’ longest-standing problems, he disclosed that he had made the cover of Life magazine – as Pope John XXIII. In February 1959, he was suspended by MIT, spent time in a psychiatric hospital, and for nine months wandered around Europe, attempting to renounce his U.S. citizenship and become a citizen of the world. Over the decades, there were additional hospitalizations, often followed by Nash’s attempts to pursue his research. “When I had been long enough hospitalized, I would renounce my delusional hypotheses and revert to thinking of myself as a human of more conventional circumstances,” he wrote in his Nobel autobiographical summary. “In these interludes of, as it were, enforced rationality, I did succeed in doing some respectable mathematical research.” Even when he returned to what he called his “dream-like delusional hypotheses,” he tried to modulate his behavior, avoiding “hospitalization and the direct attention of psychiatrists.” Although Alicia divorced him in 1962, she cared for him over the years in her home. Old colleagues at Princeton, when they learned of Nash’s suffering, arranged for him to hold a nominal job on campus.

When it fell through, they still gave him safe harbor — even if he was by then “the phantom of Fine Hall.” In the 1980s, Nash’s illness started to recede. He started to have meaningful conversations with scholars. A movement to nominate his work on game theory for the Nobel took root. In earlier years, Princeton colleague Kuhn said, he would see Nash skulking around the campus “like a zombie.” After the Prize – which Nash received with John C. Harsanyi, of UC Berkeley, and German mathematician Reinhard Selten for their work in game theory – Nash appeared to be a changed man. “Recognition is a cure for many ills,” Kuhn said. In “A Beautiful Mind,” Nash’s recognition reached its peak. Although the film, which starred Russell Crowe as Nash, did not pretend to follow the exact trajectory of his life, it was widely praised for its sensitive treatment of mental illness. Last March, Nash received the 2015 Abel Prize from the Norwegian Academy of Arts and Sciences for some of his mathematical breakthroughs, rather than for the game theory work he did early in his career.

“We mathematicians know very well that he did far deeper work much later,” said Princeton mathematician Sergiu Klainerman. “These are the works for which he is finally recognized today by the most prestigious mathematics prize.” Alicia and John Nash remarried in 2001. When they died on Saturday, they were returning to their Princeton home from the Abel award presentation in Oslo. He is survived by John David Stier, a son from a previous relationship, and John Charles Nash, his son with Alicia. The younger Nash, a mathematician with a doctorate from Rutgers, also has schizophrenia. In recent years, his parents met with New Jersey state officials to urge increases in funding for mental health programs. For more obits news, follow @schawkins on Twitter. A.J.'s Movie Reviews - A Beautiful Mind A Beautiful Mind Written By: Sylvia Nasar (book), Akiva Goldsman (screenplay) Starring: Russell Crowe, Ed Harris, Jennifer Connelly, Paul Bettany, Judd Hirsh, Christopher Plummer Rated: PG-13 (Violence and Sexuality) Running Time: 134 Min.

With A Beautiful Mind, director Ron Howard and star Russell Crowe invite us to see the world through the eyes of a genius. Russell Crowe plays John Nash, a brilliant but psychologically disturbed mathematician, who goes from searching for a truly original idea at Princeton to searching for Communist conspiracies against the U.S. Government. While based on some of the true events surrounding Nobel Prize winner John Forbes Nash, A Beautiful Mind is by no means a biography of his life. In fact, the film plays much like a Hollywood version of Aronofsky's Pi, mixed with plot twists from The Sixth Sense. The results are very entertaining, though not quite as compelling as they first may seem to be. A Beautiful Mind has been expertly crafted to do two things; please a wide audience and win many awards. I have no doubt that it will do both! Russell Crowe's performance as Nash is almost certain to win him the Oscar again this year. The fact that the Academy always seems to award characters of the 'troubled social outcast' variety doesn't hurt his chances, but his performance is indeed worthy of the honor.

Jennifer Connelly also gives a very strong performance as Nash's wife, Alicia, which puts her in the running for Best Supporting Actress as well. My favorite performance, which, due to its comedic overtones will most likely be completely ignored by the Academy, was by Paul Bettany as Charles, Nash's omnipresent Princeston roommate. As for directing, Ron Howard returns to his pre-Grinch sensibilities and creates his finest work to date. Howard uses subtle visual cues and an intimate approach to lighting and camerawork throughout the film, which, along with Crowe's performance, gives the audience wonderful insight into the workings of Nash's brilliantly flawed mind, more insight than could ever be revealed through dialogue alone. Also, Howard deftly walks the tonal line between comedy and drama, as he had with the films Apollo 13 and Far & Away, without ever overshadowing the importance or emotional impact of the characters themselves. The results are sure to land Ron Howard a well deserved nomination for Best Director. My only misgiving concerning A Beautiful Mind is that the movie shows only a small aspect of Nash's life, giving an inaccurate impression of the man's true emotional state.

While A Beautiful Mind portrays Nash as brilliant, complex and heroic, my own understanding of his life leads me toward the more likely phrase, 'a danger to himself and others'. The seriousness of Nash's mental condition is touched upon in the movie, but the reactions of others toward it are simplistic and do not always ring true. Since the events in this movie were only 'inspired' by events in Nash's life, then perhaps the story should have been fictionalized further, including not using the name of John Nash. However, as stated above, this story is a definite crowd pleaser just as it is. To include the more seamy aspects of Nash's troubled genius would only get in the way of the film's uplifting message. So, for those who doubted Russell Crowe's acting abilities, for those who thought director Ron Howard had taken an artistic backstep with The Grinch, and for those who had come to believe that 2001 would not yield a single film worthy of the Academy, I have three words: A Beautiful Mind. The World's Largest Poster and Print Store Review published a Beautiful Mind Review of a Beautiful Mind by Al Siebert, PhD The story of Nobel prize winner John Forbes Nash, Jr.

proves that psychiatrists are wrong about schizophrenia being a brain disease like Alzheimers and Parkinson's. The movie about Nash, a Beautiful Mind, starring actor Russell Crowe, is a misleading distortion of his story. In his early twenties, Nash was internationally recognized as a mathematical genius. While in graduate school at Princeton University he developed a brilliant new economic model about the ways that people and groups reach bargaining agreements. His fame increased as he worked as a young professor and an associate at the Rand Corporation. At the age of thirty, however, he developed delusions about getting messages from space and was diagnosed as having paranoid schizophrenia. In looking back at what happened, Nash says, "my ideas about supernatural beings came to me the same way my mathematical ideas did. So I took them seriously." His wife, Alicia, had him involuntary admitted to a psychiatric hospital fro treatment half a dozen times in the 1960's, but after those experiences he adamantly refused further hospital treatment and medications. He described his insulin shock treatments as torture and the medications as making him "foggy." He was appalled at what he saw happening to mental hospital patients. From that time on, he refused hospitalization, psychiatric treatment, and medications.

He lost his teaching position and his job at Rand. For about ten years he drifted around the United States and Europe. Although Alicia divorced him, she always cared for him deeply and later invited him to move into her home near Princeton. For the next twenty years he walked the halls and corridors at Princeton, where he became known as the Phantom. At night he would write mathematical formulas and strange messages on blackboards. Faculty members and the administration at Princeton felt a benign, protective toleration for him. They told concerned students that Nash was a legendary genius who had "flipped out." In the motion picture about Nash, a Beautiful Mind, actor Russell Crowe does a superb job acting out psychiatry's beliefs about schizophrenia. Director Ron Howard and actor Russell Crowe followed what the consulting psychiatrists think schizophrenia is. They did not seek input from John Nash, however, even though they shot the film at Princeton where Nash teaches. Crowe met Nash once during the filming when Nash walked by to see what they were doing. Sylvia Nasar, author of a Beautiful Mind , her award winning book about Nash, says that the movie is "a fictionalized version" of her book. (Newsweek, March 8, 2002, p.

52.) The film distorts Nash's true story in two significant ways. One is that he never had hallucinations (featured prominently in the movie), he had delusions (of getting messages from space.) Second, the movie incorrectly portrays him as controlling his symptoms by taking medications. The truth is that at the age of sixty, over thirty years after his mental breakdown, all traces of his so-called schizophrenia disappeared with no medications. Nash wrote in 1995, "Gradually I began to intellectually reject some of the delusionally induced lines of thinking that had been characteristic of my orientation." And in 1996, "I emerged from irrational thinking, ultimately, without medicine other than the natural hormonal processes of aging." Nash resumed teaching university courses in mathematics, and was regarded by all as a fully recovered. With his sanity returned, the Nobel prize committee awarded him the Nobel prize in economics in 1994 for the brilliant contributions he made as a young man. The well documented life of John Forbes Nash, Jr. shows that modern psychiatrists are wrong when they declare that schizophrenia is a brain disease like Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, or multiple sclerosis. Many people with schizophrenia do not progressively deteriorate if untreated.

Just the opposite, most improve over time. Many people diagnosed with schizophrenia, like Nash, have recovered on their own without any treatment, something never accomplished by a person with Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, or multiple sclerosis. The movie, a Beautiful Mind, is one more example of how psychiatry's delusions about schizophrenia continue to be spread, unchallenged, through our main stream culture. Little known facts and information about people who become "weller than well" after recovering from so-called schizophrenia can be found elsewhere on this website. A Beautiful Mind Movie Review (2001) | Roger Ebert Tweet The Nobel Prize winner John Forbes Nash Jr. still teaches at Princeton, and walks to campus every day. That these commonplace statements nearly brought tears to my eyes suggests the power of "A Beautiful Mind," the story of a man who is one of the greatest mathematicians, and a victim of schizophrenia. Nash's discoveries in game theory have an impact on our lives every day. He also believed for a time that Russians were sending him coded messages on the front page of the New York Times.

Advertisement "A Beautiful Mind" stars Russell Crowe as Nash, and Jennifer Connelly as his wife, Alicia, who is pregnant with their child when the first symptoms of his disease become apparent. It tells the story of a man whose mind was of enormous service to humanity while at the same time betrayed him with frightening delusions. Crowe brings the character to life by sidestepping sensationalism and building with small behavioral details. He shows a man who descends into madness and then, unexpectedly, regains the ability to function in the academic world. Nash has been compared to Newton, Mendel and Darwin, but was also for many years just a man muttering to himself in the corner. Director Ron Howard is able to suggest a core of goodness in Nash that inspired his wife and others to stand by him, to keep hope and, in her words in his darkest hour, "to believe that something extraordinary is possible." The movie's Nash begins as a quiet but cocky young man with a West Virginia accent, who gradually turns into a tortured, secretive paranoid who believes he is a spy being trailed by government agents.

Crowe, who has an uncanny ability to modify his look to fit a role, always seems convincing as a man who ages 47 years during the film. The early Nash, seen at Princeton in the late 1940s, calmly tells a scholarship winner "there is not a single seminal idea on either of your papers." When he loses at a game of Go, he explains: "I had the first move. My play was perfect. The game is flawed." He is aware of his impact on others ("I don't much like people and they don't much like me") and recalls that his first-grade teacher said he was "born with two helpings of brain and a half-helping of heart." It is Alicia who helps him find the heart.

She is a graduate student when they meet, is attracted to his genius, is touched by his loneliness, is able to accept his idea of courtship when he informs her, "Ritual requires we proceed with a number of platonic activities before we have sex." To the degree that he can be touched, she touches him, although often he seems trapped inside himself; Sylvia Nasar , who wrote the 1998 biography that informs Akiva Goldsman's screenplay, begins her book by quoting Wordsworth about "a man forever voyaging through strange seas of Thought, alone." Nash's schizophrenia takes a literal, visual form. He believes he is being pursued by a federal agent ( Ed Harris ), and imagines himself in chase scenes that seem inspired by 1940s crime movies. He begins to find patterns where no patterns exist. One night he and Alicia stand under the sky and he asks her to name any object, and then connects stars to draw it. Romantic, but it's not so romantic when she discovers his office thickly papered with countless bits torn from newspapers and magazines and connected by frantic lines into imaginary patterns.

Advertisement The movie traces his treatment by an understanding psychiatrist ( Christopher Plummer ), and his agonizing courses of insulin shock therapy. Medication helps him improve somewhat--but only, of course, when he takes the medication. Eventually newer drugs are more effective, and he begins a tentative re-entry into the academic world at Princeton. The movie fascinated me about the life of this man, and I sought more information, finding that for many years he was a recluse, wandering the campus, talking to no one, drinking coffee, smoking cigarettes, paging through piles of newspapers and magazines. And then one day he paid a quite ordinary compliment to a colleague about his daughter, and it was noticed that Nash seemed better. There is a remarkable scene in the movie when a representative for the Nobel committee ( Austin Pendleton ) comes visiting, and hints that he is being "considered" for the prize. Nash observes that people are usually informed they have won, not that they are being considered: "You came here to find out if I am crazy and would screw everything up if I won." He did win, and did not screw everything up. Advertisement The movies have a way of pushing mental illness into corners.

It is grotesque, sensational, cute, funny, willful, tragic or perverse. Here it is simply a disease, which renders life almost but not quite impossible for Nash and his wife, before he becomes one of the lucky ones to pull out of the downward spiral. When he won the Nobel, Nash was asked to write about his life, and he was honest enough to say his recovery is "not entirely a matter of joy." He observes: "Without his 'madness,' Zarathustra would necessarily have been only another of the millions or billions of human individuals who have lived and then been forgotten." Without his madness, would Nash have also lived and then been forgotten? Did his ability to penetrate the most difficult reaches of mathematical thought somehow come with a price attached? The movie does not know and cannot say. (Note: For Nash's autobiographical statement, go to Advertisement

Question: The 2001 film 'A Beautiful Mind', starring Russell Crowe, told the true story of which brilliant but disturbed mathematician?
Answer: JOHN FORBES NASH